Delight or Dismay

Collecting, buying and selling old and perishable products such as wine is fraught with uncertainty. After many years in your own cellar or perhaps worse, in an unknown cellar, one never knows whether to expect delight or dismay when the time comes to open the bottle.

A few of the top Bordeaux châteaux offer recorking services in France, but unless you're in Bordeaux with your bottles, you can't take advantage of their talents.

But the people behind Australia's Penfolds have come up with a convenient way for collectors to evaluate their wines and for Penfolds staff and winemakers to meet their customers.

Penfolds Recorking Clinic

Since the company launched its recorking clinics in 1991, its winemakers and staff have inspected around 70,000 of their bottles in cities all over the world.

The first Canadian clinic was held in Toronto in October 2005. Collectors brought in more than 180 bottles, the vast majority being Penfolds Grange, or Grange Hermitage as it was called prior to the 1994 vintage.

Grange, Australia's most famous wine and one of the New World's most collectible labels, is a shiraz first produced in 1951 by legendary Penfolds winemaker Max Schubert. A bottle of the rare 1951, which was never commercially released, sold at auction in Australia in 2004 for more than $43,000 Canadian.

More common older vintages like the 1982 might garner $500 on the auction circuit, while the current release - 2000 Grange - sells for $300 in Canada. As you've probably figured out, then, the Penfolds recorking program, overseen by its chief winemaker Peter Gago, is a program to protect investment on a product designed to improve when cellared for decades.

That brings us back to the clinic. Gago and his team of winemakers from Australia personally inspected each bottle brought to the Toronto clinic. Those from vintages since 1980 with high fill levels (called ullage in wine circles) and pristine-looking capsules were generally set aside as not likely needing to be re-corked.

However, Gago's in-depth knowledge of Grange was vital.

"We had a lot of suspect corks in 1985, so I'm inclined to recork all those," he explained at one point.

At another point in the clinic, the capsule was removed on a post-1980 bottle, and a cork saturated with wine almost to the top was revealed. Another candidate for closer inspection.

Finding Bad Penfolds Bottles

The highlight of the clinic for the owners was getting to taste a tiny portion of their treasures. It is the moment of truth, the moment of knowing whether very expensive wine is still sound and drinkable.

"We've actually had people break down and cry if our assessment is not favourable, or we come across a bad bottle," said Gago.

Mindful of today's litigious society and with many of their customers from the legal profession, Penfolds ensures its winemakers are not liable for the condition of a wine or cork, and bottle owners sign detailed waivers. The recorking service is free, but the value of some collections might tempt collectors to litigate if they don't like the diagnosis.

How to Recork a Wine Bottle

But the recorking procedure is meticulous. Corks in bad condition are removed extremely carefully. For instance, two corkscrews may be used to grip a crumbling cork. Then, inert gas is immediately pumped into the open bottle to blanket the wine against oxygen exposure. A temporary stopper is inserted to prevent spillage.

Next, a small sample is taken to share with the owner while the prognosis is made. After evaluation, the wine is topped up with wine from a recent vintage before a new cork and capsule are added. The new corks are stamped with the clinic location and date, and a back label signed by the winemaker is affixed, thus assuring the wine's value on the resale circuit. The owner leaves, having had a taste of his or her treasure, as well as help planning its future.

Putting new corks in old bottles is one way to preserve the condition and longevity of rare wine, but many, if not most, old bottles never get recorked and may be deteriorating in Canadian cellars.

Yet not all makers of fine and rare wine believe in recorking. Angelo Gaja, Piedmont's legendary star, is one winemaker who doesn't believe in recorking. He maintains that the original cork is part of the wine. It has interacted with the bottle contents for many years; a new cork risks upsetting this perfect equilibrium. He says his corks will last as long as the wine, provided the bottles are stored correctly.

One thing is clear, the condition of wines stored side by side for decades will still vary, noted Gago. "No two corks or bottles of older wine are the same."